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Submissions

Books must be submitted by agents or publishers, nominations from individuals will not be considered.

Please send four copies of each nominated book to:

Ross Bradshaw / Bread and Roses14a Long Row W, Nottingham NG1 2DH

Three further copies will be requested of books which make the shortlist.

There is no entry fee for nominated titles but publishers will be asked for a £50 per shortlisted title as a contribution to marketing costs.

The covering letter should state that the books are nominated for the Bread and Roses Award, and should give relevant contact details for the agent/publisher and the address and email address of the writer.

What are the entry criteria?

The first edition of the books must be (or have been) physically published between January 1 and December 31 2018

Nominations must be received by 9th January 2019. Judges may call in other eligible works but, otherwise, late submissions will not be considered

Self-published books are not eligible

Work by writers under sixteen is not eligible

Books must be written, or largely written by authors or editors normally living in the UK

The setting or the subject of the book need not have any connection to the UK

We accept books published by international publishers where the submission meets all criteria, the book must be available for purchase through the UK book trade

Books must be published in a physical form. Ebooks and books published solely online are not eligible

Books would normally be expected to have a spine and an ISBN so that we can promote the shortlist within the trade. On rare occasions we may shortlist exceptional pamphlets

How is ‘self-published’ defined?

Where material is directly self-published by the writer

Where the writer is expected to contribute financially to the production or publishing process

Where a publishing company has been set up expressly to publish the work of its owner or the partner of the owner

Where publishing is dependent on the author buying a number of copies of the work.

This exclusion therefore covers all forms of ‘vanity’, subsidy, ‘joint venture’ or ‘shared responsibility’ publishing. We value the editorial support and independence that professional publishers supply.

What are the prizes?

There is one prize only: the winning entry will receive £500. We will endeavour to promote the shortlist as widely as possible within the book trade and within the radical publishing community.

The prize will be awarded at the London Radical Bookfair, to be held on a Saturday in June 2018 in the Great Hall at Goldmsith’s Unviersity, London.

Why ‘Bread and Roses’?

There has been a long history of struggle in the American textile industry, not only for fair pay and better working conditions, but for the right to join a union. This struggle was symbolised by the first great industrial strike in America, which took place in Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1912, when 20,000 people (22% of the town’s residents) went on strike to demand ‘Bread and Roses, Too’. One of the most impressive features of this strike was that immigrants from at least 30 nations who spoke 45 different languages all manned the same picket lines. The mill owners had mistakenly assumed that language and culture barriers would prevent the workers joining together, and as a result of the Bread and Roses strike, attention was drawn to the appalling working conditions, and a great victory was won by the strikers.